Dimitrios Apostolou wrote:
> Hello again,
>
> I forgot to mention that I'm not subscribed so please CC: me personally in
> all
> replies.
>
> I know that installation on extended partitions is not officially supported,
> that's why I'm asking for "unofficial" information.
Always interesting to see how people will pick an OS for its stability
and its security, then try to do "unsupported" things.
> If I could choose I would
> of course had tried installation on a primary partition, but I had no
> alternative. I would either try installing it there, or not at all.
Unless you write code, it's gonna be "not at all" then, given those
conditions.
> After all, I have read at various places about it being unsupported but
> doable
> (with no details anywhere, unfortunately).
Oh? That's interesting, since:
1) The OpenBSD boot code does not load from non-primary partitions.
2) I'm not aware of any other boot loader out there that will directly
load an OpenBSD kernel (all that I am aware of just load the
OpenBSD PBR which loads /boot which loads /bsd.)
> For example I quote the following:
>
> flag Make the given partition table entry bootable. Only one entry can be
> marked bootable. If you wish to boot from an extended partition, you will
> need to mark the partition table entry for the extended partition as
> bootable.
>
>
> from http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#fdisk
Ok, at least you site a "source". That saves you from the boiling
oil. :)
Unfortunately, you misunderstand what it is saying (or what was intended).
fdisk can mark any partition bootable. That partition could be OpenBSD,
Netware, Windows, OS/2, whatever. Now it is up to the OS on that
partition to be able to boot. fdisk doesn't make it happen, it just marks
the boot partition.
OpenBSD's fdisk doesn't limit what you can do, which is why a lot of us
end up grabbing OpenBSD boot disks when we need to clean up partitioning
table messes in non-OpenBSD systems. OpenBSD's fdisk assumes you know what
you are doing, no limits. What you are doing may have nothing to do with
OpenBSD.
I've added notes about "primary partitions only" in a couple strategic
places in the FAQ.
Usually, the people wanting to do things like this are wanting to "try
out" OpenBSD. BAD idea. Don't "try out" an OS in the middle of a bunch
of other OSs on the same computer. Get to know the system BEFORE you
try to do multi-booting. Otherwise, you are very likely going to find
yourself with either an accidentally OpenBSD-only system or a blank
system. Grab someone's virus-infested computer they are discarding,
and get to know OpenBSD on that. That solves a few problems at once. :)
Nick.
